Nightfall (Jacques Tourneur, 1956)

Anne Bancroft and Aldo Ray in Nightfall

Cast: Aldo Ray, Anne Bancroft, Brian Keith, James Gregory, Rudy Bond, Frank Albertson, Jocelyn Brando. Screenplay: Stirling Silliphant, based on a novel by David Goodis. Cinematography: Burnett Guffey. Art direction: Ross Bellah. Film editing: William A. Lyon. Music: George Duning.

Nightfall is a well-made thriller strengthened by ingenious plotting: It never lets the viewer know too much too soon, keeping the motives and even the identities of its characters hidden until the right time to reveal them. Beefy Aldo Ray plays the protagonist, whom we know as Jim Vanning until his past is disclosed. Vanning, it turns out, is on the run, accused of murder but also trying to dodge the real killers, a pair of bank robbers played by Brian Keith and Rudy Bond, who think that Vanning has absconded with the loot from their heist. But Vanning doesn't know that he's also being tailed by an insurance investigator, played by James Gregory. In a bar, Vanning meets Marie Gardner, played by Anne Bancroft a few years before The Miracle Worker (Arthur Penn, 1962) won her an Oscar and made her a star. She's a model and he's a freelance magazine illustrator, so they hit it off, not so fortunately for her because at that point the robbers show up, ready to beat the location of the money out of Vanning. Marie gets caught up in the plot as Vanning eludes the thugs and hides out with her. Eventually, they go on the run, joined by the insurance investigator, who is perfectly happy to help Vanning recover the money and prove his innocence. It all moves along swiftly, thanks to Jacques Tourneur's direction, and handsomely, thanks to the  cinematography of Burnett Guffey, who is equally adept at filming the noir shadows of the city and the bright snowy landscape of Wyoming where the chase winds up.

Drive a Crooked Road (Richard Quine, 1954)

Mickey Rooney and Dianne Foster in Drive a Crooked Road

Cast: Mickey Rooney, Dianne Foster, Kevin McCarthy, Jack Kelly, Harry Landers, Paul Picerni, Dick Crockett. Screenplay: Blake Edwards, Richard Quine, based on a story by James Benson Nablo. Cinematography: Charles Lawton Jr. Art direction: Walter Holscher. Film editing: Jerome Thoms. Music: George Duning.

Mickey Rooney, usually the most ebullient, not to say overbearing, of actors, gives a subtle, reined-in performance in Drive a Crooked Road as a shy, quiet auto mechanic and amateur race-car driver who is seduced into becoming the getaway driver for bank robbers. But the film is also subtextually about sex in that most ostensibly repressed of decades, the 1950s. Rooney's Eddie Shannon works in a repair shop where the fellow mechanics gather at the windows and hoot lasciviously at any passing "dame." One mechanic even slobbers on the plate glass. They poke fun at Eddie, whom they call "Shorty" for obvious reasons, because he doesn't follow suit, questioning him on his sex life. The pack behavior suggests that any male who doesn't behave the way they do must be "queer." And then one day a beautiful woman named Barbara Mathews (Dianne Foster) shows up at the auto shop wanting her car checked out and asks for Eddie by name. She flirts with him, and though he responds with shy embarrassment, she calls on him again the next day, after he has repaired her car, to say that she can't start it. So he pays Barbara a visit at her apartment, fixes the connection that had somehow come loose, and gets flirted with a bit more. Gradually, she breaks down his reticence and, though even at the height of their relationship he's still so awkward that he doesn't even kiss her good night, he's hooked. We know by now that she's up to something, and we find out that her real boyfriend, Steve Norris (Kevin McCarthy), who had seen Eddie in an auto race, needs a driver who can negotiate the backroads between Palm Springs and the highway to Los Angeles, so he and his friend Harold (Jack Kelly) can rob a bank and make their getaway before the police have time to set up a roadblock. Barbara has grown ashamed of deceiving Eddie, but she's forced to go through with the plan of persuading him to take part in the job. This can't end well for anyone, and surprisingly for a Hollywood film of the era, it doesn't. Drive a Crooked Road lags a bit in its storytelling and doesn't build the suspense it should, but the performances are good. And the sexual subtext is what makes the film fascinating. In the depiction of Eddie's repressed sexuality, there's a suggestion that he may be afraid that he really is gay, just as there are suggestions that Steve and Harold may be more than just friends. The rampant machismo of the garage mechanics is also present in Steve's treatment of Barbara, whom he expects to do his bidding come what may. Sometimes hindsight makes a film more interesting than it was when it was released.

Houseboat (Melville Shavelson, 1958)

Houseboat (Melville Shavelson, 1958)

Cast: Cary Grant, Sophia Loren, Martha Hyer, Harry Guardino, Eduardo Ciannelli, Mimi Gibson, Paul Petersen, Charles Herbert, Murray Hamilton. Screenplay: Melville Shavelson, Jack Rose. Cinematography: Ray June. Art direction: John B. Goodman, Hal Pereira. Film editing: Frank Bracht. Music: George Duning.